A French pilot was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter after he decapitated a skydiver who had just jumped out of his plane with a wing, according to The BBC. The Montauban criminal court gave the pilot a one year suspended prison sentence for the July 2018 accidental beheading of 40-year-old Nicolas Glay.
He was also found guilty of operating an aircraft without a valid aeronautical license and was banned from flying for one year. Immediately after the drop at 13,000 feet, the pilot – who hasn’t been named – began to descend toward the aerodrome tarmac, Le Parisien, a French news outlet, reports. However, before the skydiver jumped out of the plane there was apparently very little communication between him and the pilot about where the plane would be going in the air.
CNN explains the incident further:
The incident happened in July 2018 over the small town of Bouloc, near the city of Toulouse in the country’s southwest, according to an investigation report published by the French Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety in 2020.
“A collision occurred between the first wingsuit skydiver and the aircraft’s left wing, a few seconds after he jumped out of the plane. The wingsuit skydiver died upon impact,” the report said.
The Swiss-made Pilatus PC-6 aircraft was carrying 10 skydivers and one coach, and the 40-year-old male victim was the first to jump out of the plane, according to the report.
The pilot thought he had moved away from the skydivers’ descent path after doing a left turn, but only seconds later, he felt a heavy shock “and realized that he had hit one of the skydivers,” the report said.
The second skydiver was wearing a camera, which filmed the whole process of the crash, according to the report.
A lawyer for the victim’s relatives said the incident had “a lot of recklessness or negligence.” The Midi-Pyrénées Skydiving School Association, which employed the pilot, was fined €20,000 ($22,000), but half of the money has since been suspended, Le Parisien reports.
Since the 2018 incident, security measures have been bolsters and briefings between pilots and jumpers have become mandatory, the French outlet reports.
Between 2015 and 2020, 13 people have been killed during wingsuit skydiving incidents, according to CNN.